It’s no secret that I’ve regularly voted Democrat throughout my electoral life, but I’m also no Obama partisan.  I never succumbed to the Obama-mania and I’ve regularly been critical of his positions.

But this ‘birther’ nonsense – the idea that Barack Obama is not a US citizen, natural born or otherwise, because he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii is just ludicrous.   The BBC has done a reasonable Q&A of the issues, although it doesn’t seem to cover the various permutations, e.g. the forged Kenyan birth certificate, or the idea that his US citizenship was surrendered when (if) he was adopted by his Indonesian step-father.

The birth notice in the Hawaiian newspaper is kinda enough proof for me.  I can’t imagine anyone having sufficient foresight to print a false notice in the local rag of a birth in Honolulu just to ensure presidential aspirations of an infant son.  And if that weren’t enough, the State of Hawaii swears up and down that he really was born within their territory. I reckon Barack Obama really was born in the Aloha State.

But I’m not entirely sure it matters one way or the other.  The constitution does not require that the President be born within the territory of the United States, but rather that he or she is a “natural born” citizen.   My son was born in London, but as (suitably qualified) American citizen I could pass on my citizenship to him.   He gets an American passport – and a supplementary certificate  recording the birth of an American abroad which shows him to be a “natural born citizen”.  The explanatory notes along with the certificate say that the question of whether he can be president has never been tested by judicial ruling (as it had never arisen), but there was every indication that he could, one day, be President.  No matter where Obama was born, there’s no question that his mother was a US citizen.  I don’t know what the rules were back in 1961, but if they are the same now as they were then – Obama is a natural born American citizen.

All this birther hoopla threatens to muddy my boy’s rights and those of every American expat child.  I fear that there will be a rush to pass stupid legislation which will confuse my boy’s constitutional position.   And, all for nothing.  Obama really was born in Hawaii.

Looking presidential?